RIP Harold Reid

Like with the recently departed Kenny Rogers, my parents had the Statlers on the stereo a lot. Of course I lived the old cliche of not liking the same music as my parents, and vice versa. I liked Queen, Kiss, Boston and the other rock acts of the time, and my folks would always rip me for listening to 'that crap,' and I would fire back saying it was better than their 'boring, old fogey' music.

But, of course, as you get older you learn to appreciate all kinds of music, and I have, although I'm still a rock 'n' roll fan through and through. And, like Rogers, the Statlers had great voices and some memorable, well-crafted songs. When we're on a long drive together, my Dad will fire up some burned CDs of some of his old country albums and I find myself enjoying them almost as much as he does.

P.S. My folks loved the Oak Ridge Boys, too.

 

Back when the Nashville Network was a pretty decent watch.

 

Still alive:

 

One of the highlights of my mother's life was getting to talk to Ralph Emery during a taping of his Nashville Network show. It was audience participation thing and she got chosen, and just loved it.

 

It was weird, I thought TNN was a big deal. Nashville Now, the game shows, the cooking shows, sports and outdoors on the weekend and Crook and Chase. Then within three years it seemed Gaylord pulled the plug on the network and the Opryland amusement park.

 

Wonderful show for teenage boys in the 1990s.

 

The Nashville Network is the top example of how interesting it can be to follow the lineage of some of these cable channels. That channel went from Nashville to TNN (The National Network, essentially USA Network lite) to Spike and now is the Paramount Network. Freeform is another good example; I think that's the one that started out as the Christian Broadcasting Network (with the oh-so-sane-and-rational Pat Robertson) and has had a slew of name/format changes since.